Collide Gamer

Chapter 316 – Empty Sunday

So, how does one train an anti-mage? That was the question John was faced with on Sunday. Of course, the easy answer was to just continue what he had been doing, fill up the Soulpotion and then give it to her, but that didn’t feel quite right. Another way to come to an answer was to ask the person who knew all about it.

“Well, well, well,” said the suit wearing corporate suit, disguise for a certain god, who was the person in question and also an unbearable weasel. “If it isn’t John Newman coming here to molest my soldier again.”

“I take issue with numerous things in that statement, most of all calling her a soldier. How do you feel about him calling you that way, Nia?” John asked, turning away from the god sitting on his table in front of the small café.

“Indifferent,” Nia stated with a look on her face that could only be described by that same word. A moment later, filled with the Horned Rat pulling the lid of today's basket of adorable critters, there was a wondrous glint in her eyes, or at least John imagined seeing it there despite her facial features not shifting whatsoever.

John couldn’t really explain it, but as time went on and the extremely subtle signs of her emotions moved to the back of his head, he was gradually becoming able to read the blank blonde. Granted, that was largely thanks to his high Wisdom. The only other people that were able to regularly make sense out of Nia’s behavioural patterns were Lydia (who was good at reading people in the first place) and Momo (who was an emotional support just as much as a combat one).

Rave also somewhat understood the pariah, but that was more of a case of John’s girlfriend being an extremely sociable person who didn’t care that much as long as she could keep some sort of conversation going.

“Is this a date?” Nia suddenly asked, looking at John with a quizzically tilted head and reminding him that he hadn’t completely figured her out yet. The question came out of literally nowhere.

“More or less… did you brood over that since yesterday?” came his response.

Nia nodded.

Could this girl be more socially inept if she tried? Incredibly doubtful. Although that did make her kind of adorable. John had no time to say anything on the matter since the Horned Rat reached into the basket and pulled out the cuteness of the day.

It was a small, puffy, chinchilla-esque thing with golden fur. The Horned Rat was holding it by the back of the neck, but still, the small mouse seemed more curious than terrified. Immediately smitten, Nia bolted forwards only to be stopped by Richard.

The index finger of his free hand fixated on her forehead, the other holding the chinchilla out of reach, he kept the blank at bay. In turn, Nia was helplessly waving her arms at the cute little thing while making miserable noises John would have more closely associated with a rubber duck than a fully-grown woman.

“We have done this before,” the Horned Rat smiled with schadenfreude. “As a matter of fact, we have done this every day. Do you not learn?”

Nia stopped in her struggle and took a step back. Her expression stayed vacant, but her hair seemed to lose volume as she answered with a factual, “They are cute.”

“Yes, so cute I could just eat them,” Richard said and went through the same motivational routine as last time. As that scene unfolded, John got distracted by a window.

This was, of course, a pretty neutering thing. An understandable neutering thing but still. Ten levels per month were not exactly a lot, but it also wasn’t all that limiting. A check on Herbrecht’s Grand Soulpotion revealed it to grant up to 500 non-Gamer experience, so that had been reworked to fit with the whole thing.

The more time went on, the more kinks were ironed out of his ability. The extremely abusable stuff that was busted without a doubt got reworked whenever Gaia found a ‘satisfactory’ solution for it. It made John feel like he was a walking open beta.

‘In a way that is probably accurate,’ he thought, ‘I am the first and probably only one with my kind of power. I am like an MMORPG before data mining was around.’ The fact that he had gotten as much value out of the group mechanic as he had before it got nerfed actually put him in a kind of good mood.

Actually, the more he thought about it, this wasn’t that much of a nerf in the first place. The majority of levels for Rave had come from her making a contract with Copernicus, her involuntary life-or-death fight with Thana and the months spent training with her dad. Lydia had levelled quite a bit, but she also had practiced a lot.

So, ten levels per month to be spent on people however he wanted actually just put a lid on abuse cases he had wanted to actually use once this tournament was over to make a bunch of money. The idea would have been to simply take 10-20 people that could pay some sum and go grinding with them so they would level up.

He had been refraining from that because he just hadn’t had the time for it and was currently busy mainly training himself and those directly around him. The other exploit was pulling people way above their natural limits, which he technically could still do, it would just take a very long time.

Actually, what were the maximal potential levels of everyone in his current group? He thought about it and soon was given a window that told him.

‘Well, let’s have a look… Nathalia is 1000, expected, but I wonder if that means I can level up a goddess? Same for Thana, once again just showing how busted she is, although I can’t complain on that front. Lydia is capped at 90, that’s kind of low. And Jane’s softcap is… 225. Good, good, quite high. What about Nia she is…’

His eyes went wide as he stared at the number. Her potential was capped at 666, which was kind of ominous but also just baffling because of how high the number was. He desperately hoped the Horned Rat hadn’t hacked deep enough into him to know that yet, because there was no way he would let Nia go as easily as he had announced if he knew this.

All of this was therefore okay. Gaia still hadn’t given him clear numbers on how much experience people in his group got, but now that she put a stop to the biggest offenses, John couldn’t imagine it being too hard to get people up to their potential.

There were two more interesting things here that had nothing to do with the Patch itself, however. One was Gaia admitting that she had no idea what was in his Perks. The sassy deity did not have a track record of lying, so John believed that. Together with the implication that Gaia was just tampering with systems already in place raised the question once again: who or what was actually ‘programming’ his powers?

It couldn’t be himself, at least not his active mind. If he ever got the ability to change his systems in whatever way he wanted, he would just rip open as many exploits as humanly possible. Well, hopefully he would find out one day.

‘When will I ever get the chance to level up Gamer though,’ John pondered and mentally sighed, in the background the Horned Rat acted like he was a merciful god, allowing Nia to pat one of the gold-chillas for a few moments as a reward for the past few days.

His current Class level plan was already pretty mapped out. Get Elementalist to level 20 to have the elementals as free spells, then fulfil the requirements for Arcweaver and check what that was about to (hopefully) finally get completely rid of his melee suckage. Then he would have some class levels to spare, but he would also be around level 320 at that point.

So that would have to wait. It was a pretty selfish stance, but John regarded it as most important that he himself was as strong as possible over propping people up above their natural limit. They were his powers, and he would have as much fun with them as he could.

“Okay, I have to break some news to you,” John said and told Nia what just happened.

The fact that the Horned Rat was along to hear it was annoying, but the god of dawning disaster could look into his systems anyhow thanks to Momo and John willingly taking his powers in at an earlier date.

‘One day I will find a way to make a virus-scan,’ he swore to himself.

“Well, a good thing I have no more interest in you blowing up her level anyhow,” Richard said at the end.

“Why?” Nia wondered, turning to her instructor.

“Because what you need is combat experience, you have only been…”

“…getting stronger without learning how to use that strength, yes,” John interrupted the god. He had heard lines like this too often over the last couple of days. Did everybody need to mention that whenever it came up how he levelled them?

“Yes,” the Horned Rat, uncaring about not getting to speak, nodded. “Therefore, it is a good thing you came. I feel like you should make a wonderful training partner with that new ability of yours.”

“Sure,” John sighed. He was going to follow the orders of the instructor for today.

“You want anyone specifically?” he asked.

“From Smlere to Darkness, feel free to use whoever,” the Horned Rat said, while chinchillas ran over his body and sat down on his shoulder. With that simple comment, the god had let him know that he was indeed aware of all of his Combinations already.

“Fine, let’s go with the speed demon then,” John decided and informed Siena and Sylph that they were up.

“For the record, fusing with you is a major headache,” the shadow spirit said as the two of them stood on the pavement in front of the café.

“I like it, I like fusing with all of you,” Sylph blabbered, tumbling through the air like a leaf, “It’s fun, I get new perspectives and stuff. Can we do the fusion dance? Let us do the fusion dance!”

“There are many ways to get me to shake my hips, this isn’t one of them,” Siena drily responded.

“But it’s fun, you do this!” Sylph landed on the floor, stretching her arms out to the sides, “then you go Fuuuuuuuuuuusion!” she tip-toed her way over to Siena, “HA!” the tempest elemental threw her hands towards Siena. “Total coincidence that they landed in a groping position on your big boobs and bouncy butt, I swear, I pinky swear, I super swear!” Sylph swore.

“…We are fusing now before I cut your torso open,” the nightmare elemental hissed, and thus they swirled together to form the gothic girl called Edge. Dark, greyish green hair fell all the way down to the floor and got combed back by her left, the blade-like fingers of that hand miraculously not cutting a single strand.

“I am here, I am here, but I won’t be for loooong,” the incarnation of sadism said and dancing walked over to Nia, short skirt fanning out wide; “Let’s get this party started!” and like that the blonde already had four scratches running over her collarbone, barely even able to react.

She had levelled quite a bit, but still not so much that John saw her beating any skilled melee fighter. The odds for tomorrow were long indeed. Anyhow, the two of them were exchanging blows. Well, actually no blows were exchanged. Nia was simply trying her best to only get hurt a bit instead of a lot.

“What is the training plan here? I mean like over the day, what is the schedule?” John, who didn’t plan on making the situation even worse on Nia, asked Richard.

“Straightforward and simple, although I need you to tell me what the time conditions on the ability are. Wasn’t completely able to figure that one out,” the Horned Rat scratched one of the chinchillas under the chin.

It was weird to see him get along with animals that well. “Easily put, one fusion lasts five minutes, each of the girls has her own 30 minute cooldown,” he answered with a sigh. One day he would be in control of these conversations, and then he would laugh. Long and loud would he laugh at the Horned Rat as he asked for information.

“You can chain two directly after each other for a 10-minute duration?” the god asked for clarity. John nodded. “Good, then Nia will fight them back to back, get healed and rest for five minutes, fight you for 10, heal again and then fight a fusion again. Would you do me the favour of switching them through? I would like to see them all in action.”

“You will have to work for that information,” John said, crossing his arms.

“Aw, don’t be that way, Newman, we are friends here,” the Horned Rat made a sarcastic attempt at sweet talk.

“You get to see 2, Smlere and Edge, those two are the ones I use the most anyway,” John said. It wasn’t that the rest were weak, but they had way more specialized skillsets.

“Excuse me,” Nia, fairly translucent at the moment, said and pulled the bickering duo’s attention back to her. Behind her were Siena and Sylph, both holding their head from headache.

“That wasn’t five minutes,” John noted with a raised eyebrow. “…Did you separate them?”

“I used anti-magic and they split,” the blank confirmed and then kissed John out of nowhere.

It took a few seconds of that nice, bland feeling of her lips resting on his for her to regain some substance. “Bad Nia,” the Horned Rat commented once she had become largely solid again; “This is physical training, no Nirvana powers!”

“I ask for forgiveness,” Nia said and, after at least a second of nothing happening between them or on her blank face, made a very stiff bow that roughly resembled Aclysia’s usual body language. It seemed the blank did actually take Thana’s request to ‘show more emotion on her fuckingly beautiful face’ to heart in some way.

“Just don’t do it again,” Richard was quick to forgive. John made an important mental note that anti-magic actually ended the fusion. Game Breaking or not, it was still just magic, apparently.